Four Hands
It's summer, the season to be lazy. Here's a poem from a few years back. Rest easy. Feel deeply.
Four Hands
It’s late. One by one the lights go dim.
The stage fills with shadows.
Come sit with me at the keyboard one time more.
I’ll play the bass line and you
just smile at me and turn those fingers loose
and we two old troupers here lean close
and grope to recapture the beauty.
It’s late. Light fades. Flesh wears thin.
A long tour it’s been and not an easy one
and tonight it ends.
Tonight we are haunted by regrets and joys
the riffs we missed and the chords we mangled
the melodies left unmade and left unplayed
the sorrows and the times we got it right and
made magic and the richness and the wonder
and down backstage the door where we’ll say goodbye.
Memories raise their heads
how it was those tours of the early days
how we slept all night in each other’s arms.
You hear in my chords the yearning.
Listen.
Listen.
You cross your hand over mine.
Your fingers probe a deeper register.
They reach into my gut and mine reach up
into your heart
and both of us whisper in wonder and sorrow
the music.
The music.
It’s late.
Not enough light now to read a score
Is anybody still out there? Not enough light to see.
We play old songs and we make things up
and we touch for a moment one last frayed thread of loveliness
and for that moment we again become one
and we pocket the moment and carry it
into the night
into a music we never played before.